Fifth Meeting of the Citizens' Assembly on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution

The Assembly had its fifth and final meeting on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution on 22-23 April 2017.

The work programme for the weekend focused on reaching recommendations by ballot paper voting and comprised of several steps namely; agreeing on the issues to be included in a ballot; agreeing on the precise wording of the ballot or ballots; voting.

The Assembly is first and foremost an exercise in deliberative democracy and at the end of the March meeting of the Assembly, following four weekends of consideration on the topic, Members were invited to make suggestions on the types of issues they thought should be voted upon or included on a ballot paper at the final weekend. These suggestions have informed the preparation of a draft ballot paper, circulated to the Members before Easter. This work was being led by the Chair with the assistance of the Expert Advisory Group and the Secretariat and with input from the Member Steering Group.

Each draft ballot was subject to discussion, including private roundtable discussions and question and answer sessions to examine the draft and facilitate any changes suggested and agreed by the Members and Chair. The draft ballot is sequential in nature, meaning each ballot is dependent on the outcome of earlier ballots and not all ballots may be reached. All question and answer sessions, discussions and agreements on the wording of each individual ballot paper voted upon can be viewed on our Youtube channel.

Voting was in secret and the voting process and counting of ballot papers was overseen by Mr. John Fitzpatrick, the former Returning Officer for County Dublin and his team. The results of the ballot were announced as soon as the votes had been counted and verified and this announcement was done by the Chair in public session which the public could watch live.

Ballot 3

Revisions were made by the Members on the draft ballot 3 as previously circulated. A copy of the revised ballot paper the Members voted on is available here.

The Members, by a majority of 51 votes to 38 votes, recommended by ballot Option 1: Article 40.3.3 should be replaced with a constitutional provision that explicitly authorises the Oireachtas to legislate to address termination of pregnancy, any rights of the unborn, and any rights of the woman. Further details on the result of the ballot are available here.